South Australian network for, by, and about people who hear voices and have other 'psychotic' experiences

About Us

Welcome to the South Australian Hearing Voices Network. This site a free community resource, run by Sarah K Reece with support from other volunteers. 🙂 We are passionate about raising awareness about voice hearing and other unusual experiences, and reducing fear, distress, and discrimination. Please read, print, and share freely. 🙂

Our resources are intended to be suitable for people with diagnoses such as schizophrenia, psychosis and so on, also for people who have experiences of hallucinations and so on as part of posttraumatic stress disorder, mania, or depression. We recognise that diagnosis and clinical language is very important for many people who find it an excellent fit and crucial for their understanding of themselves and to support their mental health. However, we are not a clinical resource and our focus is not about these diagnoses, rather about the experiences. Our resources are also appropriate for people without a diagnosis, those who reject their diagnosis, those are still trying to figure out what is going on for them, those who don’t find the medical model helpful, and instead have spiritual, non-trauma-origin, psychic, or other understandings of their experiences. We have built our approach upon the Hearing Voices Movement Approach.

Diversity is welcome here! The Hearing Voices Network is a highly diverse community with people who have many different opinions, experiences, frameworks to understand themselves and their lives, approaches they find helpful, and hopes for the future. We celebrate this! We have done our best to use layperson language that’s broad and neutral so everyone can feel as comfortable as possible with it. We work from a peer community basis and value the wisdom of both experts by training, alongside experts by experience. We are also here to assist those who support people with these experiences. Friends, partners, family members, and professionals are all welcome to access and share our resources and contact us.

There are other Hearing Voices Networks across Australia and internationally, please check out our Useful Links to find them or other helpful links and media.

Whatever your experiences or beliefs, you are certainly not alone! These experiences are very common. People can and do recover, or adapt, or through many different paths, lead fantastic, meaningful lives. There is hope!